"Ginger" inventor appears at Davos, stays mum

[Anonymous]

"Ginger" inventor appears at Davos, stays mum

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 30 (Reuters) - You just can't keep a good idea like "Ginger" down. Even if no one is quite sure what the idea in question is.

Not hordes of instant Internet fans bent on finding out. Not media pundits so ready to comment on the purportedly revolutionary technology. And, apparently, not even the inventor himself.

``Ginger'' is said to be the code name of an invention under development by U.S. inventor Dean Kamen. The technology, also referred to as ``IT,'' is thought to be some sort of personal hovercraft or radical new transportation device.

``I'm working on ten different projects,'' Kamen said. ``I don't even know which one they were talking about,'' he told Reuters when asked about the armchair speculation that has swept up everyone from computer industry leaders to news anchors to the neighbor next door.

Kamen declined to comment further on his work, saying he was bound by a confidentiality agreement.

Kamen was at the World Economic Business Forum in Davos, appearing in public for the first time since speculation about the invention began spreading over the Internet and into broadcast and print media.

Word leaked out two weeks ago in a report on a book proposal presented to Harvard Business School Press about Kamen's secretive project. Computer industry leaders such as Apple founder Steve Jobs and top venture capitalist John Doerr were said to back the project.

But no one who knows anything is saying, leaving anyone who doesn't know to wonder.

Popular fascination with the endless possibilities has inspired a variety of Web sites devoted to discovering the inventor's secret, including GingerPoll (http://www.gingerpoll.com), the IT question (http://theITquestion.com) and links to various patent applications filed by Kamen.

Kamen joined a panel with Michael Dell, founder and chairman of Dell Computer Corp., to discuss ``Completing the Technology Revolution.'' During the panel discussion, Kamen again declined to comment on his work.

Other technology industry leaders appearing at the six-day meeting of global poltical and economic leaders were happy to join the high-tech world's latest parlor game and indulge their own guesses at what Kamen's mystery project might be about.

``I don't know what IT is. I think it stands for Individual Transporter, a scooter of some sort,'' said Michael Dertouzos, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lab for Computer Science.

Bill Joy, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems Inc. (NasdaqNM:SUNW - news) guessed it was a low- or zero-smog emission vehicle, built from carbon fiber and containing fuel cells as an energy generator.

The mystery continue